Updated September 3, 2026. Quick answer: North Carolina does permit it, in both directions, under N.C. Gen. Stat. §§ 57D-9-30 to 57D-9-33: the statute is captioned ‘Conversion,’ which is why North Carolina turns up on lists that supposedly forbid domestication. The standalone outbound filing fee is $50. This page covers the entity-law half only.
The statute, and why North Carolina gets miscounted
The definitional chain is what makes this work: §57D-9-01(4) defines ‘eligible entity’ to include a limited liability company, limited partnership, or general partnership ‘whether or not formed under the laws of this State’: reaching entities formed anywhere. §57D-9-30(1) then lets ‘An LLC’ (the chapter’s narrow, NC-domestic-only defined term) convert ‘to a different eligible entity if the conversion is permitted by the law that will govern the organization and internal affairs of the surviving entity’: a foreign LLC counts as ‘a different eligible entity’ even though colloquially it’s also ‘an LLC.’ §57D-9-33 confirms the conversion ‘does not constitute a dissolution or termination.’ This is the exact naming trap the project tracks: a state whose statute answers the jurisdiction-change question correctly, but under a label (‘conversion’) that, at the section-heading level, reads like same-state entity-type conversion only.
What the filing costs
For an outbound move, a North Carolina LLC converting into a foreign entity files standalone ‘Articles of Conversion’ with the North Carolina Secretary of State under G.S. 57D-9-32, stating the LLC’s name, the name/type/jurisdiction of the surviving entity, both mailing addresses, confirmation the conversion plan was approved, and, if the surviving entity won’t be authorized to transact business in North Carolina, its consent to service of process on the Secretary of State. This standalone outbound filing is billed under the G.S. 57D-1-22(a)(13) ‘Articles of conversion’ line item, $50, distinct from the $125 rate the inbound direction pays because inbound is bundled into a combined Articles of Organization/Conversion filing.
That is the entity-law filing fee only. It is not the cost of leaving, and anyone who tells you the cost of leaving North Carolina is a filing fee is selling something.
The part this page does not answer
The reason people search for this is usually not the filing. It is the tax exposure: what North Carolina’s own revenue agency does when you leave, whether a final return is due, and whether the state agrees the entity has actually stopped doing business there. Those questions are governed by North Carolina tax law and administrative practice, not by the entity-law citation above, and this cluster does not source them. We have the entity-law answer at primary and the tax answer not at all.
Two things worth knowing even so, both the general shape rather than a state-specific finding: changing the entity’s state of organization does not by itself end an obligation to register as a foreign LLC anywhere you still do business, and a state’s revenue department is a separate counterparty from its filing office. If you are moving to cut a tax bill, the entity move is the easy half.
This page sells nothing and links to no filing service. Moving an LLC is a filing-desk task with a statutory answer, and the answer is either in your two states’ codes or it is not.
What is commonly published about North Carolina, and why it is wrong
A law-Q&A site (justanswer.com) claims North Carolina permits LLC domestication under N.C. Gen. Stat. § 57D-6-20, by filing ‘articles of domestication’ with the Secretary of State.
Neither exists: Article 6 covers only dissolution and never reaches section 20, and Chapter 57D has no filing called ‘articles of domestication’ anywhere: the real outbound citations are §§57D-9-30 and 57D-9-32, filed as ‘Articles of Conversion,’ in Article 9.
Check both ends of the move, not just the destination
A move needs two things to be true: your destination has to let the entity in, and your current state has to let it out. Nine states have no statutory route out, so an LLC formed in one of them cannot domesticate anywhere, however welcoming the destination is. That is where most published advice goes wrong; it checks one end.
| State you would be leaving | Why there is no route out | What the code offers instead |
|---|---|---|
| Delaware | the statute affirmatively limits it | 6 Del. C. § 18-209 |
| Kentucky | nothing in the code permits it | KRS 275.345 to 275.365 |
| Massachusetts | the statute affirmatively limits it | Mass. Gen. Laws ch. 156C, § 59(b) |
| Missouri | nothing in the code permits it | Mo. Rev. Stat. §§ 347.127 to 347.135 |
| New Mexico | nothing in the code permits it | NMSA 1978 § 53-19-62 |
| New York | nothing in the code permits it | NY LLC Law § 1001(b), certificate of merger under § 1003 |
| South Carolina | the statute affirmatively limits it | S.C. Code Ann. § 33-44-904 |
| Washington | the statute affirmatively limits it | RCW 25.15.416 to 25.15.431 |
| West Virginia | nothing in the code permits it | W. Va. Code § 31B-9-904, articles of merger under § 31B-9-905 |
Delaware is the surprise on that list and it is not a mistake; see the Delaware page. For the other eight, the substitute is a merger, not a dissolution: form the new entity in the destination state and merge the old one into it. Merger produces a surviving entity rather than a continuation, so it is genuinely not the same thing as domestication, but it keeps far more alive than dissolving does.
The full 51-jurisdiction table is on the domestication states list; the three routes are compared on how to move an LLC to another state.
Sources
Every row on this page is statutory text. No formation service, no registered-agent marketing page and no aggregator is cited anywhere in this cluster; those are the only publishers of the competing versions.
- North Carolina: https://www.ncleg.gov/EnactedLegislation/Statutes/HTML/ByArticle/Chapter_57D/Article_9.html. Statutory text, independently re-verified 2026-09-03, matches dataset (§57D-9-30, the §57D-9-33 non-dissolution language, and the §57D-9-01(4) ‘eligible entity’ definition all confirmed verbatim on ncleg.gov’s official HTML codification).